Today we're launching Nearby
on Android, a new surface for users to discover and interact with the things
around them. This extends the Nearby
APIs we launched last year, which make it easy to discover and communicate
with other nearby devices and beacons. Earlier this year, we also started
experimenting with Physical
Web beacons in Chrome for Android. With Nearby, we’re taking this a step
further.

Imagine pulling up a barcode scanner when you’re at the store, or discovering an
audio tour while you’re exploring a museum–these are the sorts of experiences
that Nearby can enable. To make this possible, we're allowing developers to
associate their mobile app or a website with a beacon.

A number of developers have already been building compelling proximity-based
experiences, using beacons and Nearby:

CVS
works with Radius Networks to help
in-store customers order their photos in minutes, and print at the kiosk

Airside’s Mobile
Passport works with Bluvision to help
airport travelers skip the US Customs line by pre-registering and submitting
their declaration form online via their mobile phone.

Getting started is simple. First, get some Eddystone Beacons- you can order
these from any one of our Eddystone-certified
manufacturers. Android devices and and other BLE-equipped smart devices can
also be configured to broadcast in the Eddystone Format.

Nearby has started rolling out to users as part of the upcoming Google Play
Services release and will work on Android devices running 4.4 (KitKat) and
above. Check out our developer
documentation to get started. To learn more about Nearby Notifications in
Android, also check out our I/O
2016 session, starting at 17:10.